Christmas pudding leftovers re-styled

Tired old Christmas pudding has long been in want of a face-lift and finally, this year, it’s getting its renaissance. Gordon’s making his Christmas pudding leftovers into a soufflé, Jamie’s turning it into a sundae and everywhere you look celebrity chefs are remodelling their mincemeat moulds.

4Food has taken this idea and run with it – some might say too far – to give figgy puddings a face-lift to remember. Enter Hannah Williams and Charlie Cottrell, the Gok Wan and Myleene Klass of fortified mince…

Christmas pudding meatballs

Meatballs are made of minced meat right? So why not mincemeat? By substituting the former for the latter we conjured up a sweet festive treat Mama would be proud of…

Ingredients

• About 400g ready-rolled marzipan
• About 400g Christmas pudding, pre-cooked in microwave
• Small pot raspberry compote
• Icing sugar/’Parmesan’ for dusting
• Mint to garnish

Method
We started by cutting the marzipan into thin strips lengthways to roughly resemble spaghetti – to be fair, clumsy fingers lent the marzipan more of a fettucine look but you get the idea.
Then we rolled our mincemeat into 6 meatball-sized balls and dipped them in the fruit compote to give it a tomato-esque glaze.
After positioning our sweet spaghetti strips on the plate in rough circles we popped the meatballs on top, added a few more spoons of sauce, some icing sugar/Parmesan sprinkles and a sprig of mint-come-parsley garnish. Voila, good enough to eat – literally.

Christmas pudding caviar

The Russians know how to celebrate Christmas, what with their big hats and glamorous parties. Where better to get inspiration for our stodgy pudding makeover…

Ingredients

• Blinis, pre-baked and ready to go
• 3-4 jellied orange slices halved down the middle and cut into 1cm squares
• 4 tbsp Christmas pudding pre-cooked in a microwave
• A few sprigs of mint
• Shots of vodka to serve – lots

Method
With very clean hands, roll the Christmas pudding into tiny caviar shaped balls.
Pop a jellied orange square on to each blini (hopefully, if you’ve cut down the middle of the slice you should be left with one side of the square that’s extremely sticky).
Put the sticky side facing up and then add your pudding balls in a glamorous pyramid stack.
Garnish with mint and serve with lashings of vodka.

Christmas pudding burger

This figgy transformation is a winner for Christmas and Thanksgiving – you know how our cousins across the pond love a good burger. And who’d have thought mayo and brandy butter were so interchangeable? We’ll never be bored by egg mayonnaise again.

Ingredients

• Brioche bun or a bun-shaped piece of brioche cut from a loaf and sliced in half
• Handful mint leaves
• About 200g Christmas pudding
• Spoonful of brandy butter
• Spoonful of raspberry compot
• The rind from 2 pieces of jellied orange slices

Method
Arrange your mint leaves on the bottom half of your brioche bun so they look like lettuce. Surprisingly, this isn’t as hard as you’d think.
Mould your Christmas pudding into a patty shape and place on top of the lettuce.
Add a spoonful of the brandy butter and a spoonful of the raspberry compote.
Garnish with the orange rind-come-onion slice and serve with a side order of fries – ones made from marzipan – obviously.

There you have it – three festive puds boasting more glamour than a sherry trifle with a sparkler. Pimp your puds this Christmas, because they’re worth it.

Get more great leftovers tips from Gordon Ramsay.

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